On the occasion of a major new retrospective of his work, this lecture seeks to account for two of American artist Bruce Nauman’s earliest and most abiding preoccupations: the vulnerable surfaces of the human body, and the potential, by turns grim and exhilarating, for modern technologies to serve as "extensions of man."
Approaching these issues through Nauman’s engagement with the writings of '60s media guru Marshall McLuhan, as well as his early experiments in film and video, the lecture explores how skin became the site of Nauman’s deepest investigations of artistic mediation, and why those investigations continue to provide a key to understanding the fate of the senses in a dystopian age.
Lecturer Jeremy Melius is an Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Tufts University.
This event is funded by the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation.